CHARCOAL
by Charlie's Rat
Summary: Gale feels his hatred for the Capitol flare like a sun spot, blaze brighter and hotter than before, whipping up a storm that the world will have no choice but to bear the brunt of. He'll burn everything in his wake, suck the Capitol dry and spit out their bones. Gale is —was— Katniss' lifeline outside of the arena. Now he's going in with her.
1. sun spots

Sorry if I get Rory's age wrong, but I haven't read the books in a while now, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that Rory is 14 years old? Yeah. Oh yeah, it's either 42 or 48 times that Gale's name is in the bowl, and I think that I'll just go with 48. (I did the counting when I read the book & I'm pretty sure that I've got it right anyway).

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><p><strong>EDIT:<strong> I read in a fic that Rory is 12 years old, but in mine he will be 13.  
>BTW I wrote most of this after I'd shared 3 spliffs with a housemate. Good times, good times.<p>

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><p><strong>CHARCOAL<strong>

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><p><strong>CHAPTER 1: SUN SPOTS<br>**

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><p><em>We were young and drinking in the park<br>There was nowhere else to go  
>And you said you always had my back<br>Oh but how were we to know_

_That these are the days that bind you together, forever_  
><em>And these little things define you forever, forever<em>  
><em><br>— Bastille, Bad Blood_

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><p>An hour before the Reaping his mother had given him his father's only remaining shirt. It had been cleaned and even straightened out recently, indicating that she must have been preparing to give it to him for some time now. In the summer heat his father's crisp white shirt feels uncomfortable on him. The shoulders are a bit too tight and there's already some sweat pooling between his shoulder blades and lower back.<p>

The uncomfortableness of his father's shirt makes it feel like the weight of responsibility, something that Gale has never been willing to accept — given the circumstances, how his father suddenly died, how the role as head of the house was suddenly thrust onto him just like his father's death. But there's nothing he can do about it but sit tight and keep his mouth shut.

Under the glare of the cameras and the sun Gale feels his hatred for the Capitol flare, flare like a sun spot, blaze brighter and hotter than before, whipping up a storm that the world will have no choice but to bear the brunt of. He's nearly free, nearly over. Just this one more Reaping and then his forty-eight slips of paper with his name on it will forevermore be removed from that wretched glass bowl.

That wretched glass bowl that will steadily fill up with more Primroses, more Rorys, more Vicks and, eventually, some Posys. More victims of the Capitol and their sickness. More stains on Snow's hands.

There's a freak of nature that walks between the separated groups of girls and boys, children too innocent for this and babies forced into adulthood too soon, and climbs the podium. The Capitol freak — snow-white skin, blood pink eyelashes and lips and catlike green claws and ridiculously tight pale blonde curls to go with her equally stupidly oversized purple flower on her head, is Effie Trinket, yours truly.

Gale is sure that Katniss and he will be laughing about her outfit this year, maybe not right after the Reaping, but maybe in the coming weeks, when everything's settled down and the bitter pill that nobody from '12 has survived again has been swallowed.

Trinket could have made her entrance more entertaining by falling down the podium steps. Or by not showing up at all, like Haymitch infallibly does every year since Gale had been old enough to be put through the Reapings.

Although Trinket has an annoyingly loud voice, in the absolute uncomfortable silence of all the Reaping nominees, her voice comes across as if she were screaming. She taps the microphone twice, which sends echoes through the crowd, ringing in Gale's ears before she speaks. "Welcome, welcome, welcome, and _happy Hunger Games_! And may the odds be ever in your favour!"

Effie claps her hands in delight, a feeling that is not shared with the rest of the people that got dealt the short stick in life.

"Now, before we begin, we have a very special film, brought all the way from the Capitol!"

She starts to continue, but Gale shuts her out, because frankly he can only put up with annoying Capitol freaks for so long, and his fuse is shorter than Katniss'. His eyes find her in the crowd after some(what frantic) searching. She's wearing a pale blue dress that probably belonged to her mother at some point (maybe it's new — he's not seen her wear it to any of their previous Reapings before), and her brown hair is roped up in a bun. She looks pretty in it, (but it's unmistakable that she has an athlete's physical build) and he winks at her when she turns and finds him looking.

While Effie is going through the same rehearsed spiel that she does each year, he mouths the first line of the stupid video the Capitol subject them to. Katniss smirks when seconds later a deep voiced narrator says; _"War, terrible war,"_

Gale's been feeling uneasy all day, and the feeling gets notched up higher, ball of stress in his stomach twisting into bigger knots as Effie Trinket walks over to the giant glass bowl filled with girls' names. Trinket becomes someone's bearer of death as she reaches into that horrible glittery bowl and snaps a paper out and prances back to her glittery silver microphone. She clips it open with her horrible nails and swings her hips. There's a baited breath, absolute silence as Effie Trinket has everyone hanging in suspense as she draws out some unfortunate girl's death —

"_Primrose Everdeen_."

No. Shit, _shit_. The ball of knots in his stomach turns to lead and plummets down his body to the floor. He breaks out in a cold sweat even though he was boiling in the summer heat only minutes before. No, no no. Not Catnip's little sister. Not _Prim_. Not sweet, innocent, fragile Prim.

Prim instantly starts crying silently, and Gale feels _compelled_ to get her away from Effie and the peacekeepers, hide her from the Capitol. But in that instant shock when the crowd parts and Prim starts walking towards the podium, Gale knows what Katniss will do. What she _has_ to do. "_No!_" She screams, screams it again and it's ripping through Gale, even as he's pushing other guys aside so that he can get to the edge to get to Prim and Katniss, "Kat—"

_"I volunteer as tribute!"_ Katniss screams at Effie and to the peacekeepers holding her down, and the shock is like an explosion, like the one that killed both of their fathers, big enough of an impact to throw off the peacekeepers and halt Gale in his tracks.

Instantly, Prim runs back to her sister and sobs into her chest and Katniss can only clutch her tight before she looks up and straight at Gale. It's unspoken what he has to do — he's going to look after Prim and her mother — Katniss has been chosen, has _volunteered_. With a heart turned to stone, he grabs Prim and lifts her up — instantly she starts screaming at him, at Katniss, to her mother. He starts panicking. Gale reaches, tries grabbing Katniss' wrist as if he could just take her with him as well, but he misses and a peacekeeper shoves him, but he reaches again, so does Katniss, and when he grabs hold of her hand he squeezes it as hard as he can. "I love you." He says fiercely, heart stricken with hate and madness and emptiness and shock. He feels like such a dick, but he's compulsive and she knows that. He's doing it now because there may never be another chance — Catnip will be gone.

Katniss' eyes go wide and that's the last he sees of her before a peacekeeper grabs her and spins her around and together with three others start walking her to the podium. Fucking peacekeepers and their inability to dish out 'justice' unless it's with strength in numbers.

Prim is still screaming, but she's shaking now as well as he carries her back to her mother. Maybe it's because she realises that she'll maybe never see Katniss again, or see her and him happy together. Katniss' mother looks broken, but there's a shine of something in her eyes when she sees Gale walking to her, something that makes her run and grab Prim from his arms and crush her into her own chest, cradle her head. Katniss' mother looks worn and old and dead with a thousand-mile stare. He feels like utter crap standing in front of them, and all he can do is ball his fists tight and glare at the ground while Katniss' mother weeps and Prim wails.

A hand grasps his shoulder and steers him back to the group of boys and Gale lets himself be dragged by the peacekeeper, walks backwards until the man irritably turns him around, just stares at Catnip's broken family and feels helplessly useless as their figures grow smaller and smaller and the realisation sinks in fully that he now has to support this family because Katniss is _gone_.

"And now, for the boys," Capitol freak calls out on the speakers, and somehow that blazing hatred he felt before at the start of the Reaping is nothing compared to the burning rage he feels now, loathing and despise for this disgusting nation boiling and bubbling just under the surface of his heated skin with the intensity of a thousand suns and stars, a whole galaxy of infinite hate and anger towards the system that has cheated so many of a good life, a happy childhood, a joyful parentage. His father's shirt feels like a restriction, feels like he's clothed in a lifetime's worth of oppression and poverty. He's never felt — been — so angry in his life as he is now.

His thoughts turn to Rory, with his name written twice on two pieces of paper in one dazzling bowl that will filter out another future from the population to distinguish. Another life snuffed out. But before he can even scan the crowd for his little brother's black mousy hair the tell-tale snapping of a paper seal rings throughout the Seam and that Capitol bitch calls —

_"Gale Hawthorne."_

Gale feels like the floor has just given out beneath his feet and his gut is twisting itself into shreds and his lungs have turned to ice. It feels like someone has just thrown a bucket of ice over him, water seeping through his clothes through his skin right down the pores straight into his bones, stabbing and stabbing and over and over. He's drowning in it. No, this was not how it was meant to happen. He's got to — got to support Katniss from outside the arena. Because Katniss has been chosen, ripped from him, how can this be no, no. Gale has got to — it's an obligation — but his name, in that horrible bowl — forty-eight times. The odds — _never in your favour_.

Rory has slipped through the crowd of boys to get to him, and he clutches for all of his life to Gale, and there are tears staining his father's last shirt, one that his mother will probably want back so she can cry at the memory of Gale and her husband. Gale, however, feels like it's all very unfair, even though he's still in shock. He feels like he's reeling from a blow to the head, one that he can't shake off no matter what.

"Gale? Where are you?" Trinket calls out through the speakers, all simpering sweet, as if she were talking to a child, and the group of boys surrounding him seem to falter, swaying like trees in the wind. They're hesitant. Gale catches a glimpse of peacekeepers closing in on their group, and feels his muscles twitch — he wants to escape, run away.

_Run away into the forest with Katniss and never return again._

_But they have Prim and Posy and Rory and Vick and their mothers_

— _But if they didn't —_

The cameras have found them now, and they zoom in on his face, all dark and full of emotion that he can't place. Rory is saying stuff to him, but it's not registering in his ears. There's something very wrong.

"Come on out now, don't be shy dear." Effie says, even makes beckoning motions at him.

He has to go — has to help Catnip. Slowly, but with pressure, he unhooks Rory's arms from around his waist, as if he were in a trance, even as Rory tries holding on tighter, and this time another boy steps up and — just like Gale did for Katniss — takes Rory from him and takes him back to Hazelle. It's the baker's son, Peter or something like that, with sandy hair and a bruise from his mother on one cheek. But all of that doesn't matter now.

He feels himself walk, feel the gazes of hundreds of people as if he were a bug under the inspection of a magnifying glass, feels the sweltering heat of those gazes, feels it absorb into his very being like a black hole. He'll burn everything in his wake, suck the Capitol dry and spit out their bones. Make them pay for what they put us through.

Effie must see how angry he is because when she bends to beckon him up the stairs, her expression falls a little and she starts looking uneasy — she knows that she's made him mad. Beside her, is Katniss, and her mouth is open a little and her eyes wide, like she's stammering. She, too, is in shock, probably feels empty inside. Gale is — was — her lifeline outside of the arena. Now he's going in with her.

They both know who would sacrifice themselves for the other.

He's so numb and shocked and too immersed in staring at Katniss and at his family in the crowd that he barely catches the end of Trinket's sentence.

"Huh? What?"

Trinket does that simpering eye-flutter and smiles at him, albeit forced, and touches up her hair with one pale, green clawed hand. "Both tributes shake hands," she says, voice not as bright and chipper as it was at the start of the Reaping. It's most likely due to his rather prominent anger licking visibly just under the cover of his skin.

Oh, yes. The handshake. Gale used to watch the tributes shake hands, and in his mind he would come up with new meanings for the handshake shared between the chosen victims. One year it was 'good luck', another year it was 'this is hell' and one year it was 'we're both going to die'.

This year, with Gale up on the stage and Catnip as his unfortunate district tribute, he knows what he's going to make this handshake symbolise.

Katniss turns to him and she seems to be thinking of shaking his hand or something else, but Gale reaches straight for her with his mind made up, and with his index, middle, and ring finger, hooks them around her own three fingers and shakes firmly.

It's a custom in the Seam, a rather old and rare one at that, but a kiss of the three main fingers is a signal of good luck, but a handshake with three fingers means something entirely different. A handshake with three fingers is what the old miners used to do. Mining is dangerous work, a fact proven by both of their fathers, and sometimes miners could lose a finger or two, but still they would continue mining, because they had to in order for their families to survive.

A handshake with three fingers became something rebellious people would use. It's a symbol of perseverance; I've lost two fingers and I'll hook my remaining fingers around yours in order to show you that I've still got strength in me, I can still go on. I'll survive.

It's a sign of strength and perseverance, and Katniss' eyes go wide at the sight of his unorthodox handshake, but then the fire that Gale loves about her returns to her eyes and she hooks her fingers around his tighter and gives their hands a deft shake.

Trinket stands between them looking a bit perplexed because she's got no idea what they're doing, because she's not cultured like they are, but after a while she nods, steps between them and cuts their handshake off. She chatters into the microphone.

"Well wasn't that a _lovely_ handshake! I love seeing such companionship! _Now_, it's time for our lovely tributes to go. _Happy Hunger Games_, and remember; _may the odds be ever in your favour_!"

As Gale gets escorted by peacekeepers into the town hall, he glances back at the crowd feeling like his fate is being sealed with the steadily closing doors, when he sees Katniss behind him, with three fingers in the air and the rest of the Seam mimicking the same signal back at her.

In that moment, Gale feels like she's become the icon for something much bigger than what he thought that she'd be. It's like she's sprouted wings and will fly free of this goddamn hellhole, like she actually has a chance at this. Like she could win the Games.

Something darker in Gale also says that she could break the Games, break it for good. It's something dark and horrid but the thought feels very pleasurable while it drifts through his head. The part of him that loves Katniss also says that he will help her achieve this impossible goal, a goal that he hadn't even realised he'd set out for them himself.

Either way, Gale will make these Capitolite freaks remember this Hunger Games. The Game in which the girl with a fire burning in her eyes and a boy with anger burning in his soul will start a rebellion.

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><p>I made a decision to not have Gale volunteer, because then it would take away from the fact that Katniss started the rebellion — she volunteered. Although I did originally write it so that Rory got chosen and Gale would volunteer for him, but then I thought that Katniss would most likely tell Gale not to volunteer — she would try keep Rory safe in the arena. Gale needs to help their families survive. I just didn't see it ending that well.<p>

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><p><strong> EDIT: <strong>I'll see if I can update this but it may be next week or something like that, sorry guys! **Please review! **


	2. glass

I just want to say thank you to all the reviewers! I appreciate your reviews a lot Also, because someone commented on my writing style, I just wanted to throw it out there that I'm not actually trying to copy the books' narrative storytelling style. I really dislike first person point of views. (Me putting it lightly). I just don't like it, because when I'm reading a story and it has stuff like "… and then I picked up X and felt Y …" I know that it's not me. I don't feel the characters like I do in third person. Plus, you also get a feel of other people as well.

**Cookie points to the person that spots the poetry verse in the text!**

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><p><strong>CHARCOAL<strong>

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><p><strong>CHAPTER 2 : GLASS<strong>

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><p><em>But even if we won't admit it to ourselves<em>  
><em>We'll walk upon these streets and think of little else<em>  
><em>So I won't show my face here anymore<em>  
><em>I won't show my face here anymore<em>

_All that's left behind_  
><em>Is a shadow on my mind<em>

_— Bastille, These Streets_

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><p>Gale has never been inside of the Justice Building, something that, ever since he'd been old enough to wonder about things, had held his curiosity. Now he would rather have lived his whole life without knowing what was inside of it, or how it looked.<p>

He doesn't pay much attention to his surroundings, just stares at his feet as he walks over carpeted hallways. What little he does take in while in his numbed-out shell state amazes him.

The carpet is a sort of warm grey, a bit like the colour of his father's eyes — and oh what would his father think of this? Would he rage against the dying of the light? Would he mope? But everything would be different because if Gale's dad was actually still alive everything would be different — and stretches across the middle of the hallway that they're walking down, disappears around unexplored corners. The rest of the floor that the carpet does not cover is marble, black and white like chess. It gives the place a sort of cold feeling, but the walls are a sort of soft white, and it looks a bit like it has a life of its own, soft glow emanating from the walls. It disturbs him. There are also some paintings hung up, and there's one of Madge's father too, along with a surprising painting of Haymitch, young and fresh and soul torn out through his eyes, winner over twenty-three dead kids.

The image stays stuck in his head, as well as Katniss' farewell. Together, as he's shoved, alone, into a nondescript room that looks warmer than the hallway, his mind replays the images of a dirty blonde haired boy with dirt scuffed on the bridge of his nose and blue eyes sad and mouth in that tilt that tells everyone that he's not happy, not at all, even though he's survived, and Katniss, walking in to that Hell that Haymitch had barely survived as he was flung out of it.

Gale wants, so hard, to be able to scream. Freak out.

But he can't let go of the anger inside of him, or the fear that is rapidly sinking icy hooks into his chest, dragging him down to murky, dark depths, because if he does — he remembers Catnip complaining to him about her mother, how she's just a shut-in shell, remembers that after his father's funeral he turned into an animal, saw everything through a haze of red for three months until he finally met Katniss is the forest — then he won't be able to trust himself to stop.

He's got to stay strong, at least until his family have left, hold it in for a few more hours until he can get himself somewhere quiet and where there's no chance for people to disturb him. But the thing is though, — will there actually be a safe place for him? Is there ever going to be a time when he'll truly be undisturbed?

As he's standing there in the middle of some foreign room, contemplating the pros and cons of freaking out and hurting his family, or hurt himself by keeping his feelings contained, the choice is made for him as a peacekeeper opens the door, gives him this unidentifiable look through his plastic visor, and then his entire family is pouring through the door like a tidal wave. He feels his lungs turn to ice.

Rory is the first to reach him, and as soon as he's close enough he leaps up and wraps his arms around Gale's midsection. Vick follows soon, also barraging into his torso, lower body swinging into Gale's shins. Rory is sobbing uncontrollably by the time Hazelle reaches him with toddler Posy in her arms.

Gale can already feel the raw square forming in his throat and the itchiness behind his eyelids, years-old signs that tell him he's going to be bawling into his mother's chest soon, whether he likes it or not.

He wraps his arms around Vick and Rory, ruffles their hair with a little more force than usual, and stares, lost, at Hazelle. His mother leans forward and Posy reaches out from her spot in their mother's warm embrace to curl her little fingers in Gale's shirt.

Hazelle's eyes, a warm light brown that none of her children inherited, are locked with Gale's, and under her gaze he feels hopeless, feels like his soul weighs more than all the coal in the Seam.

"Gale," she says, lower lip threatening to wobble. Rory cries harder and Vick is starting to hurt Gale's ribs with the pressure of his hugging.

Hazelle hesitates. "Even, even though Katniss is in it —" her voice wobbles as Posy pulls at Gale's hair and Gale rubs her small back.

"Please, — for me — all of us." Hazelle blinks tears, then gives in and crushes all four of her children as she hugs her eldest son with all of her might.

"Survive,"

Gale's not sure what that means, _survive_. Survive like outlive Katniss? Survive like get killed by her? Survive like get killed by a Career or survive like _win_? Can he do that? Survive because his father didn't?

Vick, Gale is pretty sure, has just used Gale's shirt to wipe snot off of his nose with. As Gale stands there, being crushed by all of his family while wearing his father's last Sunday's best shirt, feels like he's down the mine shaft, choking on ash and rubble and explosive gas and being crushed on all sides by collapsed tunnel rock.

It's like they're saying goodbye to his father — light white shirt wrinkled with their touch, filled with their scent, soaked with their tears, still alive of the beat of Gale's heart as he says goodbye to his family like any other day and never returns. That's what it feel like for Gale, as he stands there and takes in all of their last seconds.

He sees a peacekeeper by the door, realises that he's there to take his family away, so he wraps his arms tighter around them for one last time, burrows his head between their bodies so he's breathing the same air as them, smelling the same things as them, and closes his eyes. He feels them all move around him, tries ingraining the shape of their embrace into his memory, and then breathes in as deep as he can, inhaling their scent, the sensation of family, and holds it in his lungs for as long as possible.

Finally, as they're forced to release him, he whispers in his mother's ear; "Go to the Hob and ask for Greasy Sae. Tell her that I'm calling in on my favour. I also have a spare bow hidden under the planks under the cupboard at home if worst comes to worst. Hide it if anyone comes to the house." Her eyes widen at his admission, eyes wide and sad, but she nods and kisses his cheek.

Then, louder, for everyone to hear, he says "I love you all,"

The peacekeeper huffs like he'd rather not have to forcibly drag his family off of Gale, but he would if they didn't do it within the next ten seconds. Vick and Rory end up slipping away from his fingers, and the warmth on his chest leaves as Posy is returned to her mother's arms. His mother's eyes feel like a brand as she stays looking in to his eyes until she disappears behind the door.

Gale is left standing very alone in the room, feeling very vulnerable.

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><p>He's flummoxed when Catnip's mother and Prim walk in to the room next, probably having just visited Katniss.<p>

Katniss' mother looks unconfident and unsure, and hesitates and stands next to a plush armchair. Everything in the room looks like it would take a thousand years of their wages to buy a single item, which simultaneously makes Gale feel like a hundred dollars (an old phrase with unknown origins, but Greasy Sae is adamant that it comes from the Capitol) and like he's just dreaming it all, like nothing is real anymore.

Prim comes up and hugs him, which leaves a weird feeling in his gut, as if he'd rather that she wouldn't touch him in case she remove the imprint of his family from him. "Gale," Prim says, voice a little hiccup-y and tear strained.

"What you said to her," She's undoubtedly talking about Katniss, "did you really mean it?"

He's not sure what he feels anymore, to be honest. Cheated maybe, but also sad and really really angry, but that's being buried down for now, a white-hot rage buried in the sand, and when Gale brings it to the surface it will have become glass, and he'll be smashing the shards everywhere, making sure that the explosion will shatter his life over the entire continent.

He tells her the truth.

"I don't really know what I'm feeling anymore, but yes, when I said those words back then I felt them."

Prim's big brown doe eyes blink up at him, shiny. "Not anymore?" she whispers, like he's — oh.

Prim's thinking that he'll abandon his feelings for her now that they're going to have to kill each other, or maybe worse yet, manipulate Katniss in the Games.

Yes, he does still feel that torturous spark for her older sister, feel it kindle into a friendly warm fire where his happy place might have been, in what feels like a billion years ago but was only just this morning.

"Still do, just not sure how to go on from here." He says, then emphasises with; "There's not a lot of time," It indicates to the peacekeeper outside the door that will probably come in during the next two minutes and to the amount of freakishly short time he and Katniss have before they're going to face each other off in the Games.

Katniss' mother speaks up from her spot next to the armchair. "Well," she says, wrings her hands through her skirt, "we wanted to come and wish you good luck,"

Gale feels a bit like snorting and laughing at them. Good luck? In what? Getting killed? Killing her daughter? Prim's big sister? He knows that he wants to lift Katniss higher — how, he's not sure — but he's also got a responsibility to his own family, to survive for their sake.

The way he sees it, though, is that if they're both dead then they're well and truly fucked. If one of them survives then at least it won't be as bad as the alternative.

It's not much of a promise, but Prim smiles weakly at him and gives him another small hug when he kneels to be at the same height with her and says; "I'll take care of her as much as I can, okay?"

Prim seems happy with that, at least, as happy as someone can be when their life has been grasped by the roots and given a good shake before being uprooted completely.

There's a painful twist in his chest when he sees the door open a fraction and the peacekeeper peeks his head in before closing it again. Like there's a hook around anything that is _Katniss_, and that if even that leaves it will feel like a part of Katniss is missing from his side. Prim's mother glances at the door, eyes darting around the room in her nervousness.

"Hey Gale," Primrose pipes up at Gale, him being a tad surprised as he leans over her, caught in the action of standing up to his full height. He crouches down again, and the motion hidden from the peacekeeper's view behind her back, hooks her three fingers around his and gives it a childish shake.

Gale wants to literally let the floor open up and let him drop to the depths below. He wants to escape this, this situation where Prim and her mother _trust_ Gale, like he will continue looking out for Katniss like he's always done in the past. He doesn't want this because he can't trust himself to not change while he's in the Games, can't trust himself to still be loyal to Katniss that way. He's stuck between that happy warm spark for her and the wellbeing of his family, he's stuck between a life of unhappiness and shame and death. If he somehow manages to make it to the end — the two of them, Gale knows that he would not be able to live with himself, or ever look at the Everdeens again, if he killed her. Or, he could sacrifice himself for her, and Katniss would be the one living a miserable life of guilt, going around District 12 with a face like Haymitch's and partner less as she hunts the woods. It's not fucking _fair_ that Primrose Everdeen gets to place her trust in him and invest in the belief that Gale will continue to love and protect her big sister — Gale's Catnip.

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><p>Prim gives him this questioning look as she leaves the room with her mother, maybe wondering in her bright, curious young mind why Gale Hawthorne is frozen like a statue, still crouched down with fingers now clenched in a fist — the peacekeeper must never know what Prim did — and face looking crushed as a few tears leak from his grey eyes.<p>

But Primrose Everdeen will never know, will never find out why Gale feels like the anger he buried deep down, feels that the hot rage he buried in the sand like an ostrich's head, has solidified into glass and has cracked, a thousand miles under the surface.

Maybe Katniss also feels like this, but never Prim, because the girl he loves has made sure of this.

* * *

><p>The Hunger Games will be his undoing, but before he's even thrust into Hell's fiery arena itself, he knows that the thing that will kill him the most in the Games is his belief, his emotions, the expectations placed upon him. Gale's conscious is his own biggest threat.<p>

Like his father dying in the mines, Gale feels himself suffocating on his need, primal and bare and vulnerable, to be safe, to be _away_, to literally be in any other person's shoes but his own.

* * *

><p>Visiting time apparently concluded, the peacekeeper that was guarding his door guides him to — fuck knows, all Gale feels right now is shell-numb and overbearingly emotional. Hand on the doorknob, the peacekeeper half turns to him. "You'll wait in here until the train is ready to depart," he says, and numbly, Gale thinks <em>depart<em>, wow, like at least this peacekeeper is a bit smarter than the rest of the peacekeepers skulking around the Seam.

The peacekeeper opens the door and Gale steps inside and instantly has to raise his hands to shield his eyes from the sunlight streaming in from the window directly in front of him. The door closes while he's still blinking sun spots from his eyes.

Maybe what he'd thought earlier — about the aching need to escape from the situation, to jump into someone else's shoes — is also felt by Katniss, because when he finally spots her in the middle of the room, half in the sunlight, half in the shadows provided by the curtains, her face also looks broken.

"Gale," she croaks, and that feeling in his chest aches at her voice.

That's all she says before she's running at him, hunter speed and athleticism strong as she wraps herself around him and he around her. He's not going to press anything, not going to do anything other than hold her tighter than she's holding him, because they need this, because she still smells a bit of forest and of a time when they could have run away together.

"Catnip," he says, strokes her dark brown hair and curls his fingers around the nape of her neck and holds on tight.

He wonders, morbidly, if they'll ever end up looking as broken as the young Haymitch painted on canvas, sadness and tears dripping through and down the walls as it hangs there. If there will be two paintings, whether they'll look sad and haunted or if they'd look numb and surprised that they made it through alive. Or, darker thoughts still, if next year there will be a single portrait of Katniss hanging next to Haymitch, and if she'll look determined or if she'll look like she'll kill herself.

Those are the thoughts that race through his head and makes him shudder and pull Katniss closer in their hug.

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><p>I guess that I'm just picky with my POV's, because I don't like first POV, or third POV where it changes characters' POV every other paragraph. xP (Then there's also second POV, which is "You feel X whenever you look at them. You like Y…" and stuff like that. I think that in all of my internet-reading years, I've only ever read two 2nd POV stories! :O ).<p>

Haha, I also forgot what the name was of one of the buildings in The Hunger Games, so just Google'd _"the building tributes get taken to after the reaping"_, found out that it's called the Justice Building. XD

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><p>God I've realised just how <strong>angsty<strong> and **sad** that I've made this, but I was looking at the word count and determined to make it to 3K words. I'm sorry it turned out like this :/

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><p><strong>Please review!<strong> I love getting your reviews and encouragement! (Urgh, am stuck with a stupid Sociology essay for my university, I really don't want to do it but it's worth %45 of my marks).


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